


Tiny Grass is Dreaming

by feralphoenix



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Bullying, Multilingual Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The adolescence of one Damara Megido, or how even before Sgrub she had already reached the end of her rope regarding Meenah Peixes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiny Grass is Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> _(if you’re dead, why are your eyes so bright?_ – she floats)
> 
> Translations for all of Damara's lines can be found in the comments.

When you were small and moved thousands of miles to a strange new continent where the trolls wrote in spiky letters and the local accent sounded like sharp water, you cried a lot.

Your lusus never seemed to mind. The adults who stayed planetside and ran the culling centers never seemed to mind, either. Meenah minded it. Tears were the second thing she bullied you over, the first being your accent, which she pronounced “uninshellibubble” within the first twenty-four hours of your acquaintance.

After that disastrous encounter, you sat in the woods with Rufioh.

“涙脆いってそんなに悪いの？” you asked him. You wiped red tears off your face first, just in case.

“No, doll,” he said. He patted your back. Rufioh was mild with a reedy voice back then. He had a typical warmblood’s low self-esteem, but he was kind to everyone and even people who weren’t in the Lost Weeaboos liked him. You might have been red for him already, even back then. “It’s not a bad thing to cry at all.”

You cried from surprise and happiness the first time he kissed you, sweeps later. You cried far longer and more wretchedly still later, when he stopped kissing you and started kissing Horuss behind your back instead. He was the only friend you’d ever had who never asked you to repeat yourself.

 

There were definitely things about the local culling center you didn’t like—among them that the adults kept quietly suggesting that you take speech therapy to correct your accent—but when you were very small and the world around you was very big and sounded very strange, you would have moved into the comfort room if your lusus could have come too.

The room was soft-edged, quiet, smooth. The lights were always down, and in the one you liked the best there were mobiles in iridescent paper: Cut-out galaxies scattering lights across the walls.

You liked to lay on the floor, along the quilt. There was always a quilt, and it was always freshly laundered. You’d feel like the only troll in the whole universe until an adult employee would come in and clear their throat, quiet.

Your time for today is up, they would say, and they would sound sorry, every time.

“もうちょっとここに居てもいいんですか？” you would always ask then. Plaintively. The adults would look at you with blank smiles, and you would scrunch up your face and try to make the words and syllables come out in a way that they’d think of as normal. “Want stay.”

 

You had liked Meulin. She had set up her keyboard to type in all kinds of different sets of letters so that she could make more expressive cat faces when she typed, and she loved live-action TV shows from your birthplace, and she didn’t mind when you had to ask her to repeat herself back when you had as much trouble with the local accent as everyone did with yours.

Sometimes, when Rufioh was busy with his Lost Weeaboo friends, you’d go visit Meulin’s hive and watch Troll Otomen together. You’d talk about Rufioh and she’d talk about Kurloz and you would give each other romantic advice, even though yours mostly came from issues of _Troll Nearly Eight Sweeps_. Meulin would give you the skinny about all your other mutual acquaintances—who was pale crushing on who, who Porrim was dating this time, what ridiculous things Kankri was getting up to now—and inevitably your conversations would go in the direction of Meenah.

“I hate her, she’s such a pawful bully,” Meulin always said. She smiled most of the time, and so it was always strange to see her growling. “She’s even more atrocious than that Cronus Ampurra sometimes! And that’s saying a lot, because Cronus is purretty terrible. You’d think those two would notice they have hardly any friends and try to be nicer. They won’t have anybody to talk to about ships and feels and fun things at this rate!”

You had to smile. “二人が誰かとCPとかを話してるなんて、全然想像できないわ。そうゆーの、興味なんかないんじゃないかしら？”

Meulin wrinkled up her nose. _“I_ can’t imagine anyone having no interest in ships and feels. If that’s true, I bet they’re gonna care when they’re nine sweeps and don’t have any quadrants filled and have to go to culling centers for purractical relationship advice!”

You both giggled at that, imagining the heir to the throne having to sit down with an adult counselor and get lectured about her responsibilities in passing her genes on to the next generation.

“わたしたちがあの皇女より先にバケツ満たしができるなんて思うと笑っちゃうわね！” you said, and grinned.

Meulin blushed olive and clapped her hands to her face. She giggled again.

“You are such a clawful purrvert sometimes,” she said. “Don’t talk about pailing, that’s embarrassing!”

But she was probably thinking of Kurloz, just like you were thinking about Rufioh, and how it was still true that Meenah Peixes didn’t have anybody concupiscent. For all that Kankri was full of hot air and a total hypocrite sometimes, he was at least right about one thing: The hemospectrum didn’t guarantee anybody success.

“I can’t even believe she has the same genes as the Empurress,” Meulin said, and got up to open the thermal hull and get out some TV snacks. “Empurress Peixes seems so nice, and Meenah’s so _not.”_

You had liked Meulin very much, but it became much more difficult to visit her when she and Kurloz started dating and she moved into his hive. You had already been growing apart when he took her hearing away, and Meulin told you in tears that she couldn’t understand you anymore, she didn’t know how to read your lips. Neither of you had the patience for communicating only over notebooks and chat clients.

 

You might have liked Aranea Serket if she had not been best friends with Meenah. She talked too much, of course, but she was sensitive about other people’s feelings and she was the only person who never expected you to be able to perfectly understand the local accent. It had taken a long time for it to occur to even Rufioh that the way people talked here gave you as much of a headache as it did vice versa.

But Aranea was best friends with Meenah, and was extremely fond of her besides, if in an exasperated sort of way. There were many curious whispers about whether she was pale or ashen for the imperial princess. You did not care. The fact of the matter was that you could not possibly get along with anyone who cared so much about the bully who liked to make your life hell.

When you were both six sweeps, some time before Meenah ran away to the moon and found the code for the game, you finally went to Aranea’s hive. You were at your wit’s end.

“ミーナの奴、なんとかしてよ、” you said, and flung your hands into the air.

Aranea, who was up on a high stepladder rearranging her books, paused and looked down at you. She sat on the second highest step and crossed her arms.

“If I could do something about Meenah,” she told you, “I would have done so quite a long time ago. I really wish that people would stop thinking I have some kind of influence over her, because it’s very frustrating, _as I don’t.”_

“でも友達でしょ？なんにもできないわけないじゃない。” You looked at her, considered, and pointed. “あと、そこで座ったらちょっとヤバいわ。パンツ丸見えだもん。ちなみにあのふりふりした赤いの、似合ってると思うよ？”

Aranea glared at you, pressed her knees together, and placed both hands flat on her lap. “I swear, you are honestly almost as bad as she is sometimes. Why not stop treating me as a middleman and give her a piece of your mind personally? She might even respect that enough to leave you alone. Either way, I’m not going to be your auspitice; just being friends with Meenah is stressful enough on its own.”

“あんなの無理、わたしには。”

 

Now you are nine sweeps old, and you have been dead for a very long time, and between your disastrous three-sweep session and eternity you have had a lot of time to gain perspective on things.

Meenah comes to you with her hands in her pockets, sharp teeth gritted, her eyes white and milky as she scowls. She asks you stupid things, demanding you join her army, wanting to know if you went God Tier, telling you to open the path for her.

“そのでけぇフォークを使ってオナニーでもしちゃいな、” you reply. “あんたなんかイカせるのに十二分太いんだろ？”

“What about my cullin’ fork?” says Meenah, wrinkling her nose and curling her lip. “Gog, you are such a loon, I’m an idiot for expectin’ you to make anemone sense.”

You smile, bitter, and salute her with both middle fingers.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tiny Grass Is Dreaming (Failure To Communicate)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576120) by [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer)




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